Katy at Play Fitness and Coaching

Katy at Play Fitness and Coaching Helping women unleash their inner twenty-something and say hello to a more confident, energetic self
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We don't do inches.A woman told us about her old gym this month. She'd turn up, get weighed, then get measured. Waist, h...
28/07/2026

We don't do inches.

A woman told us about her old gym this month. She'd turn up, get weighed, then get measured. Waist, hips, arms, thighs, all logged on a chart other people in the class could see too. Every session ended the same way, converted into a number that told her how much of herself she'd managed to lose that week.

She wasn't dramatic about it. Just matter of fact, the way you talk about something you've stopped noticing is strange. That's what exercise had always meant to her. Losing bits of yourself, one inch at a time, in front of an audience.

We do things differently here, and it's not a slogan.

Your lifts, session by session. Your PBs, formally reviewed every 13 weeks, not left to memory or guesswork.

Your attendance, and more importantly what we do about it when it wobbles, because that's when coaching actually earns its keep.

Old injuries, tracked and worked around, not ignored until they flare up.

Your mood and energy, week to week, because a body that's technically stronger but permanently exhausted isn't the win it looks like on paper.

That's a lot of numbers. Not one of them is about how much smaller you've become. We're just not interested in that measurement, and we never have been.

You are never just a number. Not on a scale. Not on a tape measure. Not on a chart everyone else in the room can see too.

We're Play Fitness & Coaching, for midlife and older women, by midlife women.

DM us MEASURE and we'll tell you exactly what we track and why, no tape measure in sight.

Katy

I saw a sign on Brighton beach this week. It's from a 'healthcare' brand.It talks about 82% of people being self-conscio...
27/07/2026

I saw a sign on Brighton beach this week. It's from a 'healthcare' brand.

It talks about 82% of people being self-conscious about their bodies, and how the people on Brighton's Naturist beach are the other 18%. They're on a mission to make people feel more comfortable wearing less. There are buses round town now too: "the weight is over."

I love a pun. Not this one.

They call themselves a healthcare brand. Look closer and it's a weight loss drug retailer with AI bot support.

For the record, I'm not anti GLP-1 drugs. We have clients using them, and we support their relationship with food and maintaining muscle mass rather than losing it.

Two things about this marketing are bothering me, and it might be my advertising background that's got my hackles up.

First, the equation. Feeling good about your body, according to them, means being willing to show more of it. Fewer clothes, more skin, a selfie on the beach, tagged. Body confidence measured by how much you're willing to strip off and how you look while doing it. That's not confidence. That's moving the goalposts of how you're supposed to look, from smaller to more exposed, feeding the exact body confidence issues it claims to solve. But that keeps customers flocking in.

Advertising shows you a problem and sells you the solution. This is showing you a problem, pouring petrol on it, selling you the solution, then standing back to watch the flames.

Second, it's built on a small questionnaire dressed up as a national study, with a big percentage stat attached to sound like research. A PR stunt with a beach permit.

Real confidence doesn't come from how much of your body you're comfortable showing on a beach, whatever the media and your feed might tell you. It comes from what your body can do. The bag carried up the stairs without stopping. The grandkids carried with ease. Not needing to ask for help. The floor got up from without the running commentary. That's what makes you proud of yourself, and that's what changes how you carry yourself.

None of that needs an audience. None of it needs you to take anything off.

Katy

There were biscuits at the yoga studio. She had two without really deciding to.One of the squad told us about it in her ...
26/07/2026

There were biscuits at the yoga studio. She had two without really deciding to.

One of the squad told us about it in her check-in this week. She wasn't hungry, she hadn't planned it, they were simply there on the side, in that specific way biscuits are always simply there. And before she'd registered making a choice at all, she'd had two.

Here's the test we talk about a lot. Would you walk to the corner shop for it, because you actually want it?

If the answer's no, don't have it. If it's just there, and easy, and you'd have it without thinking... that's not a treat. That's a habit wearing a treat's clothes.

The ice cream shop was different. The same woman told us about a place she genuinely loves. Different menu every day. Proper, thought-through flavours. She'd make a special trip for it, and has done, more than once.

That's not the same thing at all. One is a choice. The other is just what happened to be on the table.

There is no only having a bit of what you actually want. There's only noticing the difference between that, and just eating what's there.

We're Play Fitness & Coaching. DM us START if you'd like to talk about what actually works for real life.

Katy x

We were on a consultation call with a woman who's since signed up with us. Talking her through how things work, we menti...
25/07/2026

We were on a consultation call with a woman who's since signed up with us.

Talking her through how things work, we mentioned the app. Not the most thrilling sentence in the world on its own, we'll admit.

But we explained what it's actually for. We log the data for every movement she does, every lift, every set, so she never has to hold it in her own head like some sort of mental spreadsheet. Then we use that data to plan and programme what comes next.

"Oh, that sounds interesting," she said. "My old gym used to measure stuff too. The only thing they were ever interested in was inches."

We paused. Inches lost, she meant. We carried on with the consultation, filing that one away.

Later, talking through what an actual session looks like, we mentioned that at the end we'll add her top weight lifted for each movement onto the whiteboard in the studio. Not for people to gloat, or feelbad but to help us manage the sessons smoothly.

"Oh, my old gym had a whiteboard too," she said. "That's where they logged the inches lost."

We were horrified. Genuinely. Not in a professional, measured way. Actually horrified. I ranted and apologised even though this is the complete antithesis of what we are ablout - the fact is is still prevalent in an industry we love had us apologising for others.

There are a hundred and one ways to measure progress. Inches isn't one of them.

How do you feel? What's your energy like? Are you sleeping better? Are your clothes fitting differently? Is your skin glowing? Do you feel fit? Do you feel healthy? Have you got your zest for life back?

None of that fits on a tape measure, which might be exactly why nobody bothers to check it.
Her old gym measured what had vanished. We measure what she's building.

DM us START if you'd like to talk about what we actually track, and why, and have a rant with me about tracking inches lost.

Katy x

"I've never done any fitness. I'm quite uncoordinated, so my brain forgets movements and instructions."This is what she ...
24/07/2026

"I've never done any fitness. I'm quite uncoordinated, so my brain forgets movements and instructions."

This is what she said, five weeks ago.

It wasn't an excuse. She'd simply assumed she'd find everything difficult, which is a fairly reasonable assumption when every fitness video you've ever seen features someone who was clearly born knowing how to lunge.

It's something we hear all the time, from women who describe themselves as not sporty, not coordinated, not the fitness type. And time and time again, they walk into the space, they train with us, and they recognise that this is their room.

Everything that's gone before... every version of feeling like an outsider, or "other"... becomes completely and utterly irrelevant here.

Five weeks in, she's loving it. She's doing brilliantly. She loves walking into the room and being herself. Not a version of herself she has to manage or explain or apologise for in advance. Just herself, whatever body and brain she's brought with her that day.

Being herself includes being a bit uncoordinated. Forgetting the sequence. Needing a movement broken down twice, sometimes three times. None of that is a problem here. It's just what coaching looks like when it's actually built around the person in front of you, rather than the person the programme assumed would turn up.

Not a script. A room that adapts. Nobody handed her a generic programme and expected her to keep pace with it regardless.

The coaching adapts to how her body and brain actually work, session by session.

Quirks and all. We've yet to meet a client without any.

This is what belonging looks like. Not fitting in. Just being exactly who you are, in a room built for exactly that.

We're Play Fitness & Coaching, for midlife and older women, by midlife women.

DM us START to come and hang out with us for 2 weeks for free.

Katy x

Thursdays are on.Three new sessions a week from the 3rd of August, at 7:30, 8:30 and 9:30. Early enough that you'll wond...
21/07/2026

Thursdays are on.

Three new sessions a week from the 3rd of August, at 7:30, 8:30 and 9:30. Early enough that you'll wonder what you were doing with that hour before. Probably scrolling if you are like me.

Nine months is the last time we added new sessions. It doesn't happen often, mostly because we'd rather stay small and present than big and a bit mindless and missing. Nine months is a long wait, but it's also proof we haven't just thrown chairs in a room and called it a class.

To celebrate, we're offering you the opportunity to come and train with us for two weeks, free.

No pressure to join. Just come and see what it's actually like, and meet the women who train with us.

Nobody's going to ambush you with a contract in week two. We'll leave that to the gym you signed up to in January and never went back to.

DM us START to come and train with us.

Katy x

es are about to change. That doesn't mean everything has to.Controlling the controllables. Summer holidays bring the thi...
20/07/2026

es are about to change. That doesn't mean everything has to.

Controlling the controllables. Summer holidays bring the thing we talk about most in the weeks before them. Changed routines. Days out with kids. Staying with friends. New environments every few days.

None of that is within your control. And that's fine. It was never supposed to be.

One of the squad put it best in her check-in this week. "I'm really busy, but I'm also trying to accept there are only so many hours in the day, and I cannot do it all."

So much is outside your control this summer. But so much is still within your gift.

Another of the squad is staying with a friend this week, who'll do all the cooking with her own kids to feed. She won't control what's on the table. She still controls how much of it ends up on her plate, and the mix of what she chooses from it.

That's the whole skill. Not controlling everything. Knowing exactly which parts are still yours.

There is no only having a little control this summer. A little is still yours to use.

We're Play Fitness & Coaching, for midlife and older women, by midlife women.

Comment CONTROL below if this is the summer you're going to hold onto the bits that are actually yours.

Katy x

We've added sessions for the first time in nine months. That doesn't happen very often. From the 3rd of August, we're la...
19/07/2026

We've added sessions for the first time in nine months. That doesn't happen very often.

From the 3rd of August, we're launching Thursday sessions at 7:30am, 8:30am and 9:30am, taking us to 24 sessions running across the week.

We haven't added capacity in nine months.

If you've been waiting, or telling yourself you'll look into it properly one day, that day now has a date.

To mark the launch, anyone joining gets a two week free trial.

Two sessions a week. Come and see what it's actually like. Meet the women who train with us, at every experience level, and learn firsthand what they've got out of it.

No pressure to commit beyond showing up.

Just an honest look at whether this is the right environment for you, because that should be your decision, made with real information.

DM us TRIAL to grab your two weeks.

Katy

She didn't pick mornings because she's a morning person.She picked mornings because she knows herself. Anything later in...
17/07/2026

She didn't pick mornings because she's a morning person.

She picked mornings because she knows herself.

Anything later in the day gives her too many chances to talk herself out of it.

Something comes up, she's tired, there's a reason. By evening, the excuses have had all day to build a case.

Mornings don't give the excuses time to organise themselves.

Choosing the time of day that supports your internal monologue is often the most important decision.

Are you someone who has to move first thing or it doesn't happen? Or plans movement for the evening and cancels it?

That is why we run all our sessions in the morning. To support the women we work with being consistent.

Katy

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Brighton And Hove

Telephone

+447956004966

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